Hubris.co.nz

I appreciate that I haven’t written in quite a while (eleven days? sheesh!), so bear with me while I try to address the many things that I want to tell you about, okay? This may take a while because I’m watching some terrible teen horror flick about virgins getting killed in some small town. Has Brittany Murphy made a good movie ever, apart from Sin City? I don’t think she has.

So, since then, what have I done? Of course I went drinking after work on Friday, even though I wasn’t entirely sure that we would, cos of the blah blah blah, but large bottles of chang were had at the Poon, and then we went to eat at One Red Dog, even though it’s only cocks who like their pizza, and it was funny cos then we went to Boulot (I was a little hesitant, based on the blah blah blah, but it was fine) and I even saw Stephen and expressed some Farrar bashing opinions, so that was amusing to me. The waitress offered us pizza and I felt so dirty for cheating on her. Later in the week, on Thursday to be precise, Karen and I went to Scopa for dinner, and Enzo was like “you can have this discreet table over there” and I was like omg, shame. Even though that was probably just me being paranoid. Scopa is fucking excellent, by the way. The girl waitresses were a tad lax (Water glasses didn’t get filled and I had to ask for more wine), but with all the food under $20, and so so tasty, and cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese and yeah, it’s superb.

On Saturday I took a big pile of CDs in to Real Groovy and got $160 credit, and then spent $180 on old records (The Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Fleetwood Mac, Split Enz, Madonna, The Mamas & The Papas), the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs on vinyl (‘Phenomenon’ is currently my play over and over song), the Punches EP on CD for Karen since I felt stink about not going to the gig with her the night before, even though she did come out drinking with us instead, and the Family Guy movie for Bart. Then I went to Dick Smith and bought a record player, wahoo. I took it home and realised it wouldn’t work with my polk audio speakers, so I went in to Noel Leemings and bought myself a new stereo as well. It’s so pretty and shiny, and also, it’s apparently a DVD player as well. Not that I have a TV in my room, but that’s beside the point.

When I got it all home, along with a new crate for my records, and tried to set it up, the record player was playing waay too quickly. Before you go accusing me of being a moron, yes, I did adjust the 33/45 switch, to no avail. Jessie offered me the helpful text advice of “stop listening to trance” when I complained it was going too fast. Later when Bart was taking a look at it for me, I realised that I’d put the rubber band on it up too high, and so we moved it down and everything played at the right speed,hurrah! Then I even taught myself how to select tracks. I’m like, pratically a DJ now.

That night, we had Bart’s Mexican themed party. Karen Lisa and I hung out in my room for ages playing records and iPods, before we emerged to share tequila shots and laugh at drunken 20 year old boys. There was much postit note abuse going on, and the room ended up buried in peanuts. The tequila wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Bart still ended up with huge grazes on his face though.

What else? Strange things this week have been having ex workmates sign up as Hubrettes, which is nice that they let me know, but it still meant that I had to go and check up on all the things I’ve written, and that meant I found this from April 2005 in my footnotes, which is very amusing if you read this and realise that was who the shiny was. In more real life/internet collisions, I got a myspace request (yes I know, myspace sucks) from this guy whose site I’ve been reading on and off ever since I found it in the referal logs for Hubris, and it turns out that I do actually know him already in the real world as friend of a friend. Yeah it’s Wellington, I should have expected that.

In other woah moments, on Thursday or Friday at work, I found myself going “holy shit!” when I heard myself on the phone to our technical services manager, and I was talking about a problem our client was having, and I proposed a solution, and an alternative solution, and I was like, so smart, and so on to it, like I’m actually good at my job or something. I know right, crazy. And I’ve been working really hard too. Of course, soon there’ll be like no one at all to talk to left. Sigh.

On that note, we had D’s goodbye drinks on Friday, followed by Sarah’s. I’d worried all morning that I was going to be in a crappy mood at it, but then when I went to the gym, the trainer was like “hey guess what? one of the other clients told me that you’re shrinking!” and I was like “what? Huh?” and she was like “yeah, you’re shrinking and she thinks you should be member of the month” and I was like well, I suppose the twins are perkier, and so we made an appointment for me to have another assessment next week, and then I was feeling really good about that, so I worked out extra hard, and felt just fan fucking tastic. Of course, the good mood didn’t last as long as I needed it to though, and when we were at the Last Supper Club and later the Welsh Bar I did wonders for the spirit of womankind and female empowerment by deciding that the reason no one was paying me any attention was that all the women around me were whores. Witness my text messages to Heather: um actually I deleted them, but they were full of “icantstandupstraitanymoreihatethosewhorespleasekicktheirassesformeihategaxyboys” typeness. And yes, that’s right, gaxy boys. Your guess is as good as mine as to what I meant.

Yesterday was a write-off. Today I spent the day in Ngaio doing laundry and reading the paper with my daddy. And crying at the Gilmore Girls. Finally! Fuck man! Took far too long. This week I have Poseiden tomorrow (yay free (bad) movies), dinner at Anji’s on Thursday and then Japan at the Country Club on Saturday. In preperation for it, I picked up my photo albums from Japan, and I can’t believe how long my hair and legs were. I was totally cute, and I wish more people had told me that.

My daily dialogue – both aloud and in my head – is currently peppered with the phrase “suck a fuck, you ass hat”. It’s great. It makes everything seem better when you can call the people who wrong you (rightly or wrongly) an ass hat.

You’re sitting in my favourite seat on the bus? Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

Or:

Oh, so you decided to stop reply to text messages because you’re seeing someone now, and you thought hey, passive rejection of someone who’s been passive-aggressively pursuing you is awesome? Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

Or:

You’ve got a new job which means there’ll be even fewer people to hang out with here? Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

Or:

My new boots are going to take a couple of weeks to come into stock? Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

Or:

It’s been three weeks now and what, I don’t deserve it? I know you got my last email, I typed the address on it perfect. Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

Or:

You drank my gingerbeer? Suck a fuck, you ass hat.

In the last case, I should take it back, because I later found my gingerbeer further back in the fridge. And of course, the awesome almighty power of the phrase, much like that of the panda dance, should only be used for good, not evil, and it mustn’t be abused.

Discoveries of the past week have included that fact that gravy on fries is super super tasty after all, and that Tiffany was Canadian. Apparently. We played Headbands at Canadia, and I was like “Okay, so I’m Canadian, I’m not a musician, I’m not an actor, I’m not a politician, I’m not a sportsperson and I’m not really a comedian, what the hell am I famous for then?” and then I laughed and realised who I was and laughed heartily. We didn’t watch a movie because the store didn’t have Southpark. Instead we just ate pancakes that took me an hour and a half to make because it was a quadruple batch, and a quadruple batch of chocolate mousse, and poutine(ish). Mmm poutineish. I have to say though, that I am still constantly surprised and disappointed by people who don’t tell me that they’re not coming. I mean, it takes 30 seconds to send a text message, and it’s free, so I don’t get what their excuse could be. Unless it’s me sending back nasty replies, but I don’t do that. Much.

The Phoenix Foundation were awesome later that night, but my belly was so full of Canada still that I couldn’t dance to the Mysterious Tapeman, and then my feet were screaming in agony leftover from the pancake-making, and I just wanted the gig to end. Luke Buda at Caberet on Sunday night was lovely and sitting down though, along with a $45 banquet from Chow. I took Mummy and Daddy along, as well as Lisa of course, and they enjoyed themselves thoroughly, which is grand.

What are my other things that I’ve been up to this week? I cried and cried and cried watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition because it was a really political episode (yeah I know, random huh?) so along with the usual chick crack thing, I was crying for soldiers who aren’t Jessica Lynch and who therefore don’t get all the attention and cash-in, and I was crying about social injustice and I was crying cos the kid was so very fat,and how the hell does a kid get to be that fat? I mean, I was overweight, but I ate nutritiously at least. It wasn’t until we moved to Japan that I really porked up, and that was me making my own choices (“hey, at least food will be my friend…”). That kid was like six. Oh well. I prefer my chick crack to be much simpler and less of the making me think variety please.

Haha, did I really just write a paragraph about Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that didn’t also include the sentence “I’m due for my period soon so…”? I guess I did. Who knows where my period has gone. I’m pretty sure I’ll be giving birth to the anti-Christ any day now. That might explain why I’ve spent so much time on Myspace recently, including starting a group for the Country Club which you should totally join.

Right now I am full of lunchtime yum char with workmates, which was surprisingly more yum than I had been expecting, and full of plans to move tonight’s drinks from Ponderosa to Red Square, using the excuse of the weather but primarily because I always have a bad night if I go to Ponderosa, so frankly it can suck a fuck. And that brings us around in a nice circle, so I might sign off from this entry.

I came home about 10.30pm last night, and the kitchen was absolutely spotless, so I immediately asked Bart to marry me. He said yes so I walked back out to my parents’ car and they gave me a cheque for three grand, and I showed it to him and he said “well, I guess we’d better get a wriggle on then”. But then I decided to pay off my credit card with the cheque instead, since he hadn’t actually caught the mouse that we apparently have in the kitchen which was the reason for his cleaning. And yes, that’s right, I’ve had a credit card for under a month and I already have over three grand on it. But I also have tickets to America figuratively in my hot little hands, so that’s okay.

And I was home that late at night because Anji and I had gone to Capitol for a bottle of wine (I <3 Capitol, the service is outstanding, and the toilets smell so good, and the bruschetta is yum), and then we'd joined up with the rest'o the family at Hazel, where much more jolly awesome wine was drunk, and mountains of tasty tasty food eaten. I am currently craving more squid rings from there, and I don't even like squid. Perhaps I am pregnant. With the second coming.

If you're wondering why I am so much more chipper in this post than I was in Tuesday's, well it appears that the one/two emotional gut punch of watching 'The Body' and 'The Gift' together paid off. Well, that and large doses of the Arcade Fire, St John's, exercise, listening to 'Kim' on repeat (geez, why are you so angry, Marshall?) and all twelve episodes of the unbelieveable hip hopera Trapped in the Closet, which is just so fucking wow that it deserves another round of Holy Fucking Crap!.

Other things of note that I have been up to lately? Hosting the work quiz last Friday. After much debate about the amount of wine we were to have, we did end up running out. My arms ached from carrying eight bottles one block, so in a way maybe it’s better we didn’t have more. The quiz went well, even though I was having initial “no one likes me!” thoughts at the number of attenders, although we ended up filling the room very well. On Saturday I went to see the Dukes of Leisure play at the Carter Observatory, and I was drinking straight vodka from a small bottle, and it was all misty with lamp posts on the way there like Narnia, and we had pillows and got to lie down, and I got to have snuggles with first Anji and then Karen and we all know that I’m a Romanian orphan starved for physical affection so that was nice, and I fell in love with the man who gave us a star tour, because I love story-tellers, and they made us popcorn in the middle, and the music was good too and oh, it was just great and I was crazy giggly, and that amused me muchly. On Sunday I went to a private screening of The Imposters which was hilarious, and found out various bits of gossip that I might reprint here if I could be bothered footnoting it but I can’t, and I just felt choice.

Tomorrow is Canadia, as I’ve mentioned before, and then The Phoenix Foundation at Indigo, and then on Sunday Luke Buda at Caberet. And now it is nearly 5.30 so I must put on lip gloss and harrass the boys downstairs until they come out for a drink with me. My feet hurt from being an escort to a group of people who came to look at the clever things that we do at work. And then one of the directors referred to me as a handmaiden. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen…

My weekend was a shocking pile of debauchee. I participated in: lying to my manager; drunkenness; sexual harassment; sexual arousal; groping; other people’s hands on Mary-Kate and foul language. And that was just Friday night. Okay, so the lie was totally bald-faced, and was merely an excuse to accompany my cow-orkers to their netball dinner. The drunkenness was nothing special, just a lot of white wine. The sexual harassment was constant, and returned (the boys were trying to look up my skirt, despite the fact that I was wearing trousers), the groping was hilarious and mutual, and the foul language was to be expected (*).

On Saturday I felt great on account of having stayed up til 5am so I was stone cold sober again. I cleaned the house, had a shower, treated Seb for fleas, kicked the boys out of the house and set off flea bombs in my room and in the lounge. Of course, it was after I had locked the front door and exited that I heard the BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP of smoke detectors going off, so I had to rush back into the lounge, find a chair to clamber on and pull out the battery, all the while coughing in the flea gas. Still, at least it should have killed the larvae in my lungs, right?

I repaired at the Medditerean Warehouse with a margharita pizza (and one of these days I will learn to spell) and the paper, before continuing the Italian theme with shopping to prepare for ‘Rome at the Country Club’. Later, after attempts at napping and some of The OC, which quite frankly I find myself really not giving a shit about, the darling Lisa Fur came and picked me up, and we went to her house via being served at the mill by Conor Oberst, who has apparently fled to New Zealand where he can shed his cold cold tears on his cold cold bathroom tile before getting up to sell cheap cheap liquor to ladies and say “laterz!” to them. We went to Lisa’s house and she played me absolutely devestating videos by the Dears, which you shouldn’t watch unless you’re prepared to cry. Then Brad and KateB came over (do you like the way I invite my friends to other people’s houses? I’m really good at that) and we had some more drinks and played some more music and then took off for the Aro Valley for Joel’s house.

At Joel’s, we sat in the garden and feared for our lives when he threw more furniture on the fire. I saw people I knew from when I worked for VUWSA and was happy that they were the people I liked. I think we were either very early or very late, but it was nice to see Joel again, even though I goddamnmotherfuckingshitfuckcunt forgot to get my Straitjacket Fits CD back off him. He’s had it for like a year now. Grr. Then we left to wander the streets slowly, and I started a long text conversation with my friend because we happened to be passing his house. Upon reflection, I realise that I do tend to text random things at random times (*). Brad peeled off somewhere, and Kate fell asleep on Lisa’s couch, so I made Lisa play me vinyl and make me popcorn. She’s a good bitch like that.

On Sunday, I was in pukesville. Apparently drinking a lot of bubbly straight from the bottle is bad for you. Who knew? Nevertheless, I soldiered on with Rome preperations, chargrilling red peppers to go in homemade hummus, making trifle with banana cake and pineapple in lieu of tiramisu, and putting pizza dough on in the breadmaker. Eventually I had to call a timeout so I retired to the local cafe for coffee and grease and the paper before coming back to the mountain of dishes and assorted other hospitality tasks that awaited me. And then I awaited my guests. You know, Kate mentioned that she thinks there’s been a drop in recent years in the number of people who actually call (or even text) to say that they can’t make it to an event, and I think she’s right. That said, there was still a stream of “oh, I’m too hungover” or “oh, the formula one is on” texts that made me go grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. But the people who did come were very cherished, and appreciative of the effort I’d gone to. Also, my flatmates now think I am the greatest flatmate in the world, because it turns out that while I’d heard that Caligula was quite porny, I figured it’d just be softcore boobs and fake sex. Oh no, my friends. It was hardcore jizz baths, penetration and cunnilinguis. With costumes. And sex with horses. Hurrah! I fear I have set a high standard for further Country Clubs, but oh well. I can rename it the Cuntry club and feature porn from all around the world.

Last night Karen and I went to Kazu for some food on sticks. I should point out that we went to the good new one, without the terrible service and the quivering pizza that are found at the Tory St branch. The one on Courtenay Place is right next to the once beloved Arashi, which has since removed both ginko nuts AND their banana & peanut butter spring rolls from their menu, so what’s the point? Then we wanted to see Sione’s Wedding but it was all sold out so we went to A History of Violence instead, which was good. And violent, strangely enough.

Today at work I sat in on a videoconference featuring Tze Ming Mok, who was almost frighteningly articulate and Tusiata Avia talking about writing from a non-European perspective to an audience of Wellington High and Wellington Girls’ girls via video links, and it was really interesting. It made me think lots of things which I have completely forgotten about now, because it’s the end of the day. The ‘compare and contrast’ between the two of them in pretty much every aspect of their work was really interesting, as was also thinking about identity in general. Oh, I know what I wanted to say, and I’ll have to paraphrase really badly here, but Tze Ming spoke about how there’s a sort of expectation in the circles that she moves in that she will write about certain things, and I suppose that’s something that I feel too – not, of course, as an essayist and a blogger, but as a person with an online journal. It’s something I spent a lot of time talking about in the olden days when I was at counselling, my need to keep people entertained. And then I’d say something deep and then I’d say something else to make Kalpana laugh. Awesome, nice consistency there. Hmmm, this all sounded better in my head over lunch. Nevermind, I’ll call it off here.

On Friday I left my comfortable position in one of the partially enclosed courtyards at the front of Red Square with leather couches and company directors buying the drinks (although it wasn’t THAT comfortable cos I was feeling bad for wearing a rather low cut new top, which would have been fine had there not been 13 of us in a small space and if those people hadn’t been the top brass, one of whom commented that she was feeling underdressed, but meh) to go up to Katy’s house for a girlie night. It was fabulous. There’s nothing like insulting the personalities of pretty girls on America’s Next Top Model to make yourself feel ever so slightly shallow. Lots and lots of wine and snacks and vege lasanga and nice girls who seem keen to come to birthday parties make it better though. LisaB went off on a hilarious riff about girls who sit on boys’ laps and because of the teeth inside their cunts they stay together for years. Katy and I also had a big long discussion about morals and people’s often lack of them too, which was great.

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On a vaguely related note, don’t think that I fail to see the irony – or the contradiction, perhaps, in someone saying that maybe she doesn’t want to come to my party cos she doesn’t want to hang out with my friends but she’s perfectly happy to co-opt certain people. Not impressed.

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Also this weekend I finally decorated my room. There’s been a Bic Runga poster up since I moved in, pretty much, but now there’s all kinds of goodness – well, mostly Hellcat Amazon posters. They’re so great. Also great is SUNSHINE, and sitting in it drinking pina coladas. My hot tip? Condensed milk added in to the blender. Yum. The problem with our back garden though is that the concrete is on an angle. We need bean bags, or something. I’ve discovered, however, that I can cook a mean roast beef. I like that we seem to have people for dinner every Sunday (so okay, it wasn’t actually a ‘beef’ I was roasting. Heh).

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You know how it’s really hard to stop squeezing your pimples? On that same note, damn I wish I could stop reading all those websites that I really loathe. It’s even worse now that I’ve made some comments. I’m sick, I’m diseased. I need help. And ewww, people who have sex with Winston Peters – that is so so wrong.

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When I was ten and my father was working as secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs I sat in Don Mckinnon’s chair during a tour of Parliment with an exchange student from Palmerston North (when I stayed with her they took me to the stock car racing). Now I wish that I had pooed in the chair. If Daddy ever actually answered his emails, I’d ask him what he thought about the current state of affairs.

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I’m going to be pretty happy when my bleed finishes and the full moon buggers off so I can stop having filthy but unsatisfying dreams. I would like my dreams to stop featuring me 1) being sexually assulted 2) sucking on the boobs of random slappers in bars cos everyone was doing it 3) making out with one of my female friends a lot in a hotel room 4) giving one of my male friends who I haven’t seen in a very very long time a blow job, only to discover that his penis was pretty much finger sized. All so wrong wrong wrong. It’d be great to be able to control my dreams – or actually, you know, do something in real life. Ha! I don’t think I actually even remember how anymore….

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Random points to finish up on cos I gotta go do dishes:

You do still have my Straitjacket Fits CD, right Joel?

Rachel Hunter is so much more betterer on TV than I imagined that she’d be.

There are still literally too many people on the Internet who say “literally” when they literally mean “metaphorically”.

And yes, I am well aware that I just said “much more betterer”.